How to Insert YouTube Videos in PowerPoint

If you have ever found yourself trying to play a video that you linked to from your PowerPoint presentation, whether in the classroom or at a conference, and it didn't work, keep on reading.  This guide by Amit Agarwal, a personal technology columnist and founder of Digital Inspiration, shares how to embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint slides.

Tutorial: Embed Web Videos in PowerPoint (for Office 2010)
Embed YouTube Videos Directly into PowerPoint

This is the easiest approach and recommended if are sure that the presentation venue will have great connectivity.  Download the YouTube Wizard plug-in here and upon installation, this will add a new "Insert YouTube Video" command to your PowerPoint Toolbar.



Insert YouTube videos to your PowerPoint presentations from the menu

You simply have to type the URL of the YouTube video and follow the wizard to add the YouTube video player in your current slide. You can resize as well as reposition the player anywhere on the slide.

Play YouTube Videos in PowerPoint without Internet

While the above solution works great, the only problem is that it streams live videos so an internet connection is required to playback the video during the slideshow. If you plan to deliver a presentation without internet, take the following approach.

First download the YouTube video locally in either Windows Media or AVI format since PowerPoint doesn't understand the default FLV or MP4 formats of YouTube.


Add YouTube videos for offline PowerPoint Presentations

You can either use Zamzar.com or MediaConverter.org to save any YouTube video as an AVI file – I prefer Media Converter since it supports in-browser conversion while Zamzar requires your email addressing where they send the link to converted video.

Once the video is saved as an AVI or WMV file on your computer, go to Insert –, Movie –, "Movie from file" to put the YouTube video in the current slide.


Get Videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint

Now consider another possible case – you spent lot of effect preparing an elaborate presentation inside Google Docs with several YouTube clips but how do you import all this into PowerPoint.

While Google Docs does provide an "Export as PPT" option, the problem with this format is that it converts all embedded YouTube clips into static images which is something you don't want.


Insert YouTube videos from Google Docs into PowerPoint

There's however a simple workaround – just publish that Google Docs presentation as an HTML slideshow and then insert it like a web page in PowerPoint using the liveweb plug-in. Thus you can play YouTube clips inside PowerPoint though they are part of your Google Docs presentation.

Another advantage of this approach is that if you change any of the clip in your original Google Docs presentation, it will be reflected in the PowerPoint presentation as well.

HTML Cleaner

Clean HTML. -- if you have ever tried copying an Excel sheet or a Word document into an HTML web page (i.e. Blackboard), you know the amount of useless tags and styles that are added to the output making the HTML file bulky and complex.

Similar is the situation when your copy-paste rich text from an existing web page into another text editor. To keep your HTML clean and beautiful, Tom Dyson has created an online utility at WordOff.org that takes your "dirty" HTML and strips out all the junk while preserving the links and basic formatting.

Word Off will delete all HTML elements that are empty, removes every  and  tag and reduces the number of line breaks.

Free Online Meeting and Web Conferencing Tool

Say Goodbye to Costly Online Meetings! We are excited to introduce the launch of FreeScreenSharing.com, an online meeting and web conferencing tool that is perfect for screen sharing, product demonstrations, webinars, training sessions and much more – and all is absolutely FREE! Using FreeScreenSharing.com is easy! All it takes is your name, email address and a self generated password to get started. Upon registration, you will also be provided with an integrated audio conferencing account to use during your online meetings. However, you are welcome to use your existing audio conferencing account or any account you prefer. To edit your audio conferencing credentials, login to your FreeScreenSharing account and locate the Lobby Manager tab. Next, locate the Phone Conference section and update your conferencing credentials there, click Save and you are all set.   To get started with FreeScreenSharing, click on the "Create Account" button below, fill out the required fields and you are ready to begin hosting online meetings with FreeScreenSharing.com. To learn more, click here. We are always looking to improve our services and would appreciate your feedback. To share your thoughts, simply fill out the survey on the exit page at the end of each meeting. If you have any questions or comments, our knowledgeable Customer Service representatives are available 24/7 to take your questions and help you get started. Please call us toll–free at 877–482–5838 or +1 562–437–1411 if calling from outside the U.S. or email us at support@freescreensharing.com. Thank you for using FreeConferenceCall.com!

Learn Out Loud

In the past few years the number of freely available courses on audio & video has greatly increased as universities have opened up their classrooms to the world by giving away a number of their courses. Recently YouTube launched YouTube EDU which now features videos from 100s of universities around the globe and a number of these universities are offering full courses available for free on video through YouTube. Also prestigious universities like MIT and Yale have launched "OpenCourseWare" sections of their own sites and universities like UC San Diego and UCLA have started podcasting a number of courses on audio. Learn Out Loud has added them into a free directory.  For a complete list, go to their website (http://learnoutloud.com) Here's what is new:

Harvard University .
Khan Academy 
MIT OpenCourseWare
New York University
Stanford University
UC San Diego
UCLA BruinCast
University of Houston
University of Notre Dame
Yale University
Biola University
Cambridge University
Columbia University
Dominican University of California
McMaster University
Otis College of Art and Design
Oxford University
Rutgers University
Spring Arbor University
Stony Brook University
U.S. Army War College
UC Davis
UC Irvine
University of Michigan
University of Missouri-Kansas City
University of New South Wales
University of Virginia
University of Washington
Vanderbilt University

Microsoft Acquires Skype

Microsoft has finalized the $8.5 billion acquisition of VoIP service Skype, initially announced in May 2011.

The deal had to pass regulatory approval in several markets, with Europe being the biggest hurdle for Microsoft. The EU Commission has previously fined Microsoft for antitrustbehavior.

Under the terms of the agreement, Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of that division.

Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis; it was acquired by eBay in 2005, but eBay couldn’t find a way to integrate it into its business and subsequently sold it to an investment group led by Silver Lake in 2009.

The $8.5 billion deal with Microsoft is a very profitable exit for that group of investors, which includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board — they paid $2.75 billion for Skype.

As for the future of Skype and the challenges Microsoft faces, the first and foremost will be the fact that Skype is not yet profitable. However, Skype’s huge user base (more than 663 million users, 170 million of which use the service monthly) and constant growth make it an appealing purchase for a company that knows what to do with it.

“Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s goal to reach 1 billion users daily,” said Bates in a statement. Check out his comment on the acquisition in the video below.

iPads: Applications and Uses in Education

The following iPad Applications were mentioned and explored during

the Campus Technology Conference Workshops:

Current Events

Library / Reference

Web Browsing

Course Management Systems

Textbooks / Digital Books

Social Media

Screen Sharing

Subject Area

Word Documents, PDF, Excel File Readers & File Sharing

Organizational & Ideas

Project Creation (iWork)

Accessibility

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